Musings of an Easily Distracted Mind
by lurknomore
Summary: Season 3 drabbles from Chandler's POV. Mostly about Monica.
1. Author's Note

Musings of an Easily Distracted Mind.

Rating PG/PG13

A/N A series of drabbles about Chandler's state of mind in Season 3. Not really canon, not really A/U or 'what if': just unexplored. I just can't believe that Chandler didn't have SOME kind of low-grade thing for Monica over the course of the whole series, even if it came and went – and even if Marta Kaufmann says that in the early seasons you could have no idea how well Monica and Chandler would work as a couple.

Not sure how many of these there will be. If Monica makes an appearance, she will likely get her own little series.

Feedback (this is my first Friends fanfic) is highly desired and treasured.

Disclaimer: Not mine. Never mine. If they were mine, it would be less of a problem that I'm not working. Anything in italics is dialog from an actual Season 3 episode.


	2. The List

The List

From… TOW Frank, Jr.

_Monica: So, Chandler... who's on your list?  
><em>_Chandler: Uh, Kim Basinger, Cindy Crawford, Halle Berry, Yasmine Bleeth, and, ah, Jessica Rabbit.  
><em>_Rachel: Now, you do realize that she's a cartoon... and way out of your league?  
><em>_Chandler: I know, I know, I just always wondered if I could get her eyes to pop out of her head_

Chandler knows that Jessica Rabbit is a cartoon. And truthfully he really has very little interest in a one-off sexual encounter with a cartoon. (Partly because he figures he would never make her eyes pop out, and also because he thinks he'd make a pretty boring cartoon).

But he can't tell anyone (not Janice, not Joey, not anyone) his number five (one).

Number five (one) doesn't meet the list criteria, anyway, even if she's just as unattainable and out of his league as an animated drawing with spectacular anatomy.

Janice won't consider Chandler's number five (one) a celebrity.

Monica Geller isn't a star to anyone except Chandler.


	3. Cravings

**Cravings**

From TOW Rachel Quits

_Ross: Monica, I'm cutting you off.  
><em>_Monica: No. No, just, just, just a couple more boxes. It-it-it's no big deal, all right, I'm-I'm cool. You gotta help me out with a couple more boxes!  
><em>_Ross: Mon, look at yourself. You have cookie on your neck.  
><em>_Monica: (covers her neck) Oh God! (runs to the bathroom)_

Chandler knows Monica has some weird food issues. He figures that she feeds everyone else because she isn't feeding herself: that in some weird unspoken Monica way she decided food was love, and if she couldn't have it anymore, she'd give it to everyone around her.

Most of the time, she's got it all under control. But now it's the holidays, and she's got no boyfriend, and she's talking to her mother regularly and well…he's a little ticked at Ross for triggering the food issues.

On the other hand, he's kind of fascinated by Monica in the throes of a food addiction. The cleaning thing, he gets, and he loves (well, he loves because it's so her), but the cookies… she needs them, and she gets flushed when she eats them, and well…

It's hot. He can imagine her flushed with need for other things, and he justl…

The upshot is that now he's having dreams about feeding Monica mint treasures. She's got that damn Princess Leia gold bikini on (which is weird, because he's never really had a Princess Leia thing, he's got more of a Catwoman thing) , and she dances for a cookie. And when he feed it to her (he knows the slave feeds the master, but it's his fantasy, so it can go anyway he wants it to), he brushes it against her skin to get that smear of cookie on her neck so he gets to lick it off.

Damn Ross.

He'd damn the Brown Birds, too, but he feels a little guilty about condemning little girls to hell.

The only upside is that his mother has never showed up in a Monica dream. (And it's a sign, really, of how messed up he is that he isn't even sure anymore if this is an upside, because Monica is showing a disturbing tendency to show up in ALL his dreams, and she has the exact opposite effect on his libido as his mother.)


	4. Regret

**Regret**

From TOW Chandler Can't Remember Which Sister

_Chandler: Veronica. Look, it's got to be Veronica, the girl in the red skirt. I definitely stuck my tongue down her throat.  
><em>_Monica: That was me.  
><em>_Chandler: Look, when I've been drinking, sometimes I tend to get overly friendly, and I'm sorry.  
><em>_Monica: That's okay._

Chandler regrets hurting Joey. He regrets kissing Mary Angela. He regrets opening Joey's presents (not that Joey really cared). He regrets embarrassing himself at Joey's family dinner. And apologies for all of those things tripped out of his mouth, one after the other, until he was more or less forgiven.

But his biggest regret of this whole fiasco is one he hasn't shared with anyone.

It's about Monica. And no, it's not that he kissed Monica (though he apologized for that, too, pretty sheepishly).

No, his biggest regret, by far, is that he doesn't _remember_kissing Monica. He doesn't remember what she tasted like, or what she felt like in his arms, or if she kissed him back.

He's going to regret that for a very long time: one more lost opportunity in a sea of them that stretches back to his first unrequited crush on Ellen Stevens in fourth grade. But now that he thinks about it, he might be better off not remembering.

Because he's pretty sure it felt good.

So it's OK that he doesn't remember, because it's a whole lot easier to regret the possibility of something than the actuality of it. He learned that a long time ago.


	5. The Not So Empty Vase

**The Not-At-All-Empty Vase**

From The One with All the Jealousy

_Phoebe: Oh my God, oh my God! Poor Monica!  
><em>_Chandler: What, what, what?  
><em>_Phoebe: What? He was with her when he wrote this poem. Look, (reading) 'My vessel so empty with nothing inside. Now that I've touched you, you seem emptier still.' He thinks Monica is empty, she is the empty vase!  
><em>_Chandler: You really think that is what he meant?  
><em>_Phoebe: Oh, totally. Oh, God, oh, she seemed so happy too._

Chandler is outraged. Monica Geller is many things. She is loud and overly competitive and compulsively anal and opinionated about everything except whether Picard or Kirk is a better captain of the Enterprise (if you ask her, she'll say Shatner was better looking but Patrick Stewart has a sexier voice. Chandler guesses she has a point, even though it's not really relevant to the question at hand). But empty? He can't even. She is full of love, and passion, and a profound need to do things (cook your favorite dinner, organize your sock drawer, fix your love life) for the people she loves. Monica is the least empty person he knows: she loves with everything in her, and the idea that someone could mistake that passion for emptiness just pisses him off.

If Chandler wrote a poem about Monica, it would be about crystalline blue eyes and soft freckled skin and raven hair. It would be about how fiercely she loves and how much she wants to take care of you – and how all she desperately wants is for someone to love her with some of the same focus and a fraction of the same care.

Chandler doesn't write poems, though: he makes jokes. So all he does is suggest to Ross that maybe he should give Monica the number of that barbershop quartet.


	6. Distractions

**Distractions**

From TOW Monica and Richard are Just Friends

_Monica: Yeah well, I ran into Richard.  
><em>_Ross: So, are you gonna see him again?  
><em>_Monica: Tomorrow night.  
><em>_Rachel: Monica, what are you doing?  
><em>_Chandler: Well, she spent the last six months getting over him, and now she's celebrating that by going on a date with him_

Chandler knows Monica loved Richard and Richard loved Monica. He watched it unfold and he had even been happy for her – Monica deserved to be happy. Hell, he and Joey had really liked Richard, mostly because he made Monica happy but also because he was pretty cool for an old guy. Chandler's …thing…for Monica comes and goes, kind of like Seasonal Affective Disorder (or the need to smoke). Sometimes she's his best friend Monica, or Ross's annoying sister Monica. Sometimes (always) she is Monica, the ridiculously beautiful woman he wants kind of like he wants a cigarette (sort of a low-grade, fundamental craving he mostly ignores because cigarettes/Monica are bad for him and because everyone/Monica will be mad at him if he indulges).

Except now he knows that Richard didn't love Monica _enough_. Richard, with his easygoing charm, his excellent manners, his Jag and his….Richardness…deserves Monica even less than Paul the Wine Guy or Ethan the child or Fun Bobby. His hate for Richard grew with the shadows under Monica's eyes, fed by the tears that soaked into his shirt while he held her and tried to make her laugh with his stories about Joey and Janice's Day of Fun or his stupid jokes about jam.

So the idea that Monica is going to be just friends with Richard is pretty stupid on her part, but he won't stop her (not that he could).

He'll just be there when she needs to cry, he thinks, while he carelessly puts dress shirts with his bowling shirts and scatters his ties around the closet. (Monica likes to organize Chandler when she needs distraction. Chandler generally doesn't mind being organized, at least by Monica. Because when she's done he will know exactly where the ties are that go with the gray suit and the green shirt, which will mean time for more Nintendo before he has to get dressed for work.)


	7. Competitive Urges

****Author's Note - thank you all so much for the feedback! It's always tricky dipping into a new fandom: you try to walk the line between what you think, and what people expect. I'm especially grateful to those of you who are liking the analogies/metaphors.

This one isn't all that metaphor-laden. I was just mildly amused by the fact that Chandler picks on Ross more than Monica in an episode where Monica isn't even on his team, and Ross is.

**Competitive Drive**

TOW with the Football

_Monica: Losers walk!  
><em>_Ross: Yeah, losers talk!  
><em>_Chandler: No, no, no, actually losers rhyme._

Chandler is still mourning Janice. He loved her, and he lost her, and it hurts more than he ever would have expected.

But somehow, playing this stupid football game with his friends is improving his mood. He still hates Thanksgiving and all it stands for, but he is grateful, every day, for the five of them. And he's out in the fresh air, and there's a beautiful blonde woman to impress (who looks nothing like Janice), and he realizes again that his life really doesn't suck.

And he has to admit, it isn't just the game, or the blonde.

It's Monica. He can't help it. He mocks the Geller siblings and their competitive streak unmercifully, of course. But he is always amazed at how differently they handle it. The fact is, the competitive drive that turns Ross into a complete weenie makes Monica seem hotter than, well, _ever_. Even when she tackles him in front of Margha, part of him can't help thinking how ridiculously _sexy_ Monica is when she gets like this. Monica wants (needs) to win, and unlike Ross, she doesn't whine, or make excuses when things don't go her way. She just goes after what she wants even harder - and to hell with everything else. And while Chandler is simply not wired that way (it's why he never excelled at sports ), there isn't anything sexier to him than that gleam in Monica's eye.

Especially when that energy is focused on a game, or a troll doll nailed to a board, and not some guy who doesn't deserve her (and who isn't him).


	8. Appearances

**Appearances**

TOW Phoebe's Ex-Partner

_Monica: So umm, how was your date with Ginger?  
><em>_Chandler: Great. It was great. She's ah, she's great, great looking, great personality, she's greatness.  
><em>_Monica: Sounds like she's got the ah, whole package.  
><em>_Chandler: Joey told you about the leg, huh?  
><em>_Monica: Uh-huh.  
><em>_Chandler: Oh God, it freaked me out. Okay, I know it shouldn't have, but it did. I mean I like her, I don't want to stop seeing her, but every so often it's like 'Hey, y'know what, where's your leg?' I mean I'm the smallest person in the world aren't I? I'm the smallest person in the world._

Chandler likes Ginger. He does. What's not to like? She's beautiful, she's funny, and she laughs at his jokes. And the leg thing… he's pretty sure it doesn't bother him in anything other than a superficial way. He's gotten better at overlooking superficial things (though he's still not sure he really would have been able to stand a lifetime of Janice's laugh, even if he could have dealt with her fashion sense and her voice). He actually thinks the problem might really be that he's worrying about the possibility of it worrying him, and that's a level of insecurity and navel-gazing that seems dumb even to him.

At least, that's what he was worrying about when he talked to Monica. But somehow talking to Monica made him realize that… it's not that. At least, it's not _just_ that.

He wants (needs) a woman who gets him. Who gets his jokes as soon as he makes them (not a beat later or never): who makes quick eye contact and smirks when Joey says something really dumb, or Phoebe is more than usually esoteric: and who doesn't humor him so much as support him and challenge him simultaneously.

But that woman isn't available, not to him (besides, he's not sure who he'd analyze the date with after the date if he ever got the nerve up to go on a date with Monica if she were crazy enough to accept one. Can you do a post-mortem of a date with your date? And since doing the date post mortem with Monica is part of his dating ritual, would it actually _be_ a date if there was no post game analysis?).

And Chandler likes Ginger, so he made another date with her.

Monica smiled when he told her that. One of those approving, Oh-my-God I'm-so-proud-of-you smiles that makes him wish, briefly, that he could do something (anything) to make her smile at him the way she used to smile at Richard (more of a loving, Oh-my-God-I-think-you're-amazing smiles that Richard seemed to take entirely for granted.)


	9. Copies

**Copies**

From TOW Ross and Rachel Take A Break

_Chloe: This guy is my hero, he comes in with some stuff he wants it blown up 400%, we said we don't do that, and he says you gotta. And y'know what, we did it. And now anytime anybody wants 400, we just say 'let's Ross it!'  
><em>_Chandler: And that's the only color that comes in._

Chloe is hot.

And she is not Monica. Or Janice, or even Ginger.

So looking at (and fantasizing about) her for the past few weeks has been a nice little distraction.

Talking to her, though, turns out not to be nearly so nice, even if it's definitely distracting - for all the wrong reasons.

Chloe is quite possibly the most boring person Chandler has ever met - and given that he spends his days with data processing office drones, this is a fairly impressive feat. He's learned more about copiers in the past hour than he ever wanted to know, and the only thing he's sure of right now is that he'd rather listen to his assistant talk about her dog. And Chandler hates dogs.

Chloe's 'hot' factor has decreased with every anecdote, by orders of magnitude that Chandler can't even calculate – and since Chandler _is_ good at math, that's saying something.

This, he thinks, as he sips his beer, is yet another thing he can blame on Monica. Before he spent so much time with her, he didn't mind it too much if girls were boring, especially if they were pretty and willing to listen to him. But now… he minds.

The thing about Monica is that, even when she drives him crazy, or treats him like a second brother (though sometimes he thinks she likes him more than she likes Ross), or argues with him (or shows up in his dreams), she doesn't bore him. She frustrates him, comforts him, annoys him, amuses him (turns him on)… but she has never been dull.

As he listens to Chloe drone on about an XS4200, he finds himself wondering how Monica's date with Phoebe's translator is going.

Hopefully the guy is talking about transitive verbs.

With his luck, though, the guy tells great stories and better jokes.


	10. Damsel

Damsel

Author's note: sorry it's been so long. I haven't forgotten this, even if you guys have probably forgotten this series.

Spoilers for _The Princess Bride_, and _Die Hard_, and _The Terminator_. Because Chandler's subconscious is an interesting place.

**TOW the Morning After**

_Monica and Phoebe: Ow! Ow-ow-ow-ow!  
>(Hearing the screaming Chandler and Joey rush in. Joey has a pan, Chandler has a tea kettle.)<br>Phoebe: We're all right.  
>Monica: It's okay, it's okay.<br>Phoebe: We're all right.  
>Monica: We were just waxing our legs.<br>Chandler: Off?_

Chandler has an active imagination. He always has – he figures it's the last refuge of the only child. (He prefers that explanation to the disturbing concept that he gets his imagination from his mother, the writer. The idea of inheriting anything from either parent freaks Chandler right the hell out.)

And in that active imagination, he occasionally thinks about what it might be like to be someone's (Monica's) hero.

He makes fun of the girls' love for chick flicks, but there is one thing those movies share with the action movies he and Joey love: there's always a hero, and they always save the day and they usually get the girl, too. In _Die Hard_ Bruce Willis saves the world, and his ex-wife, and everyone else, even if they didn't know they needed to be saved. And in _The Princess Bride_, Westley saves Buttercup even when he's mostly dead. (_Princess Bride_ is not a chick flick, no matter what Joey says: it has sword fights. And Andre the Giant! Andre the Giant could not be in a chick flick, Chandler is pretty sure there's a law.)

Because that's what heroes do: they save the girl, and then they get the girl. Usually with banter as well as derring-do.

Even Ross saved Rachel – or he tried to, anyway. And action movie and chick flick logic prevailed: he got Rachel when Rachel found that out. Until he blew it by sleeping with Chloe, the most boring hot girl in the world, that is.

So Chandler thinks, sometimes, of what it might be like to save Monica. He's not very brave, and her life seems to be pretty danger-free (except for the parade of jerks she dates, most of whom are bigger than he is and less sarcastic than he is or taller or older or well, you know, just not him, and aren't exactly dangerous to anything except Monica's self esteem). But he wonders sometimes, if he beat up Richard for her, maybe she'd fall into his arms, or at least see him in a new light: as an actual man, and not her pal with stupendously bad luck with women.

When he and Joey heard her screaming, he ran in without even thinking, teakettle in hand, ready to slay whatever dragon needed slaying. It wasn't exactly a sword, or as obviously heroic as John McClain tossing off a "Yippy-ki-yi-yay" and blowing away a few mercenaries, but Chandler knows he'd do anything for her.

Of course, with the spectacular flameout of Ross and Rachel currently playing out on the other side of the door, he's not even sure what he'd do if Monica woke up and saw him as a possible romantic prospect. After all, Chandler can't even sustain a relationship with a drycleaner. So the odds are he'd screw it up in record time, if he somehow managed to change the way Monica looks at him. And then what? She'd be gone. Hasta la vista, baby (ok, so, the Terminator never got the girl. But he was a cyborg, so he didn't want the girl.)

And the truth is that the idea of having no Monica in his life at all is far, far scarier than watching her date other guys.

Lying purveyors of leg wax didn't need to be slain, exactly, but during that long, long night he did offer to print out the letter she drafted telling the Waxene guys off.

Luckily (or sadly, depending on his mood) owning a computer and a printer really didn't qualify as a heroic act.


End file.
